You want fries with your Freedom?
By Chris at July 17th, 2001 22:58:00

My company released a brand new account, designed solely to sate the appetite of the masses, who wanted our superior Quality Of Service without the pricetag attached. The Freedom account was their burger of choice, but we weren't allowed to sell it to them, or provide information when they asked for it. Instead, we had to try to sell them our premium account. No exceptions...

Many a battle had been faught over this war. The Rebels (ie: everyone except Russell) held out that this information should be profferred, yet Russell (the All-Powerful Musical Empire) was staunch in his denial. Yet one sunny Sunday afternoon, an unsuspecting staff mailing list became home to the imfamous joust which routed the enemy!

Can we have a canned Freedom response?

[ed] A "canned response" is a template email that you send to a client in response to their query. Common question typically get canned responses made up for them.

We have,

Just send the Explorer response and the Freedom features are answered at the bottom of each Explorer feature. ;-)

[ed] The "Explorer" account is our premium account.

Yes, I noticed that. I was looking for a *specific* one. For people who object to being upsold.

Really,

Our whole sales campaign, IVR is based around upselling customers to our more profitable products. If we can't try to upsell customers (which most of us are doing a great job), just selling the Freedom will hurt iiNet.

Customers won't get angry if we asume they want the best, it's our job.

Do you get angry when you go to MacDonalds and they ask if you would like to upgrade to the large meal pack? It's their job.

Regards
Russell

[ed] "IVR" is one of those annoying phone systems where you press heaps of buttons to wind up stuck on hold for half an hour, before the system dumps your call. "For complaints, try pressing '6B', suckers."

This is a quote from a task, which included the current canned response.

> I am surprised that you have not mentioned the
> account that is $24.95 per month.......
> anyway.....I thought I'd mention it.

Russell Stokes wrote:

> Customers won't get angry if we asume they want the best, it's our job.

True, but if someone wants the info, why can't we just give it to them? Customers will get angry if they aren't given all the information.

Andrew

Russell Stokes said:

> Do you get angry when you go to MacDonalds and
> they ask if you would like to upgrade to the large
> meal pack? It's their job.

Yes, it shits me to tears, if i wanted fries with my burger i would have asked for them and if i wanted a large i would have asked for it, and in my case, with my appetite, if i could afford it i would have aksed for it but i cant so i didn't, i am quite competent at making decisions on my own, so quite bugging me

That is the answer Russell, I know why we do it, as i understand why Macca's does it, but i still hate it when i am on the receving end

However, Macca's gives you a complete menu to chose from when you are ordering and so should we so that the customer can then decide whhat it is that they want with all the information at hand

touche.

I have no problem in making the freedom sound as undesireable as possible and upselling at every opportunity (and believe me, freedom clients will hate the new hold music! it's all about the upsell). However, I do have a problem with witholding information to start off with. It's so unethical I would probably sue myself for dodgy business practices.

rew.

Hmmmm....

Is the Freedom like a Big Mac (Explorer) minus the meat, pickles and tomato?

Wouldn't it be great if you could enthuse your customers with what is available in the full package and then get them really excited about how they could use all those benefits!

You could then let them know about all the features they will be missing out on if they go for the basic package. :-)

That's not being dodgy, your just presuming they want the very best.

regards
Russell

but I might *like* my big mac that way. that's besides the point though, because it's what I ordered. if I want to know what's in the cheese burger I don't want to be told all about the big mac, how great the big mac is, and why I should get the big mac because it's bigger and better. I want my cheese burger dammit! that's what I asked for!

if maccas would go along the lines of what it seems we are, then they'd have a very short menu: Big Mac, Large Fries, Large Coke. no variety, you get your big mac or else you have to put up with a shitty burger that we made up from bits that are left on the floor.

really, I can't see why you're digging your heels in on this. Sure, we want to go the upsize and go the big mac, but if we're going to at least offer the cheese burger then lets at least let the buyer know what's in it. the information that we have to email out the the client isn't sufficient enough to do that.

hell, I might even buy the cheeseburger, but now that you've told me how crap it is, I don't like it. Will the big mac be any better? given that the quality of my cheeseburger is pretty crap in my eyes now I don't want to try the big mac because it might be the same.

personally I'd be very pissed off if I asked for the cheesburger account details, but got some dainty little email telling me that I want the big mac account because the cheeseburger account is of a far lesser quality.

I'd take my money and go to hungry jacks instead. now maccas doesn't have the chance to upsize me later. I went to hj's and asked for their cheese burger and they didn't tell me why I should shove a whopper down my throat. now I'm a happy HJ's customer, because HJ's gave me what I want. Maccas didn't, they tried to give me something I didn't want.

see? making the information difficult to come by is going to make you end up drowning in the chip fryer, because you drive customers away in frustration, because they can't get the simple answer to the simple question: "what's in a cheeseburger?"

now I'm all hungry for HJ's, and I can't even remember if I work at maccas or iinet.

Silence... and the appearance of a canned response with the required information.

Victory!

We got taccos for our victory celebration dinner.